Constant engagement with stakeholders, including shareholders, employees, communities, governments, and members of civil society, help us determine material corporate responsibility (CR) issues.
Our Corporate Responsibility Forum sets corresponding objectives – encompassing governance, people, health and safety, customers, supply chain, environment and community – and measures performance against them. It is chaired by the CEO, who has Board responsibility for CR, and involves individuals representing all key business functions and divisions. The CR Director engages with the Reed Elsevier (RE) Management Committee and Board on an ongoing basis. All feedback is incorporated into our CR activities.
Engaging others
Networks of colleagues throughout RE contribute to CR: Community Champions; Environmental Champions; the Socially Responsible Supplier group; customer service teams; works and staff councils; the HR Management Council; legal colleagues; and the RE Accounting Services, Internal Audit, and Communications departments, among others.
We actively support sector and inter-industry initiatives that advance CR. We serve on the steering group for the Media Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Forum, working closely with media industry peers including United Business Media, the BBC, BSkyB, Yell and Turner. In 2008, we contributed to a report on stakeholder views, which highlighted responsible advertising, transparent editorial policies, and balanced output as issues increasingly important for media companies.
We serve on the steering group of the London Benchmarking Group, helping in 2008 to shape their advice on valuing media company community contributions, and are also members of Business in the Community, the Corporate Responsibility Group, and the Publishers Database for Responsible Environmental Paper Sourcing (PREPS).
We are committed to transparency through stakeholder engagement. In 2008, employees shared their views through internal working groups, opinion surveys, intranet resources, ‘town hall meetings’, newsletters and more. We surveyed senior business leaders through the annual CR Questionnaire and our legal teams kept us abreast of statutory obligations or those that might be introduced.
We completed numerous CR-related surveys and interviews including the FTSE 100 CSR Assurance Survey. We held direct meetings on CR with investor groups like Baillie Gifford and VBDO; government through involvement with Respect Table, a sustainability forum supported by Margot Wallström, Vice President of the European Commission, and consulted with the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) on the Carbon Reduction Commitment; worked with NGOs like Earthwatch, the Carbon Trust, Green Standards, and Save the Children; engaged with British Standards on their new sustainability guidance, ISO 26000, and CR consultancies like Accountability, Eco Network and Best Foot Forward.
Listening to others also means taking action when necessary. When customers and other stakeholders expressed concern over our participation in organising defence exhibitions, we made a decision in 2007 to withdraw from the sector. As CEO Sir Crispin Davis stated, “It has become increasingly clear that growing numbers of important customers and authors have very real concerns about our involvement in the defence exhibitions business. We have listened closely to these concerns and this has led us to conclude that the defence shows are no longer compatible with Reed Elsevier’s position as a leading publisher of scientific, medical, legal and business content.” In 2008, our divestment from the sector was completed. Read the press release.